TY - JOUR
T1 - Resilience and regime shifts
T2 - Assessing cascading effects
AU - Kinzig, Ann
AU - Ryan, Paul
AU - Etienne, Michel
AU - Allison, Helen
AU - Elmqvist, Thomas
AU - Walker, Brian H.
PY - 2006/6
Y1 - 2006/6
N2 - Most accounts of thresholds between alternate regimes involve a single, dominant shift defined by one, often slowly changing variable in an ecosystem. This paper expands the focus to include similar dynamics in social and economic systems, in which multiple variables may act together in ways that produce interacting regime shifts in social-ecological systems. We use four different regions in the world, each of which contains multiple thresholds, to develop a proposed "general model" of threshold interactions in social-ecological systems. The model identifies patch-scale ecological thresholds, farm- or landscape-scale economic thresholds, and regional-scale sociocultural thresholds. "Cascading thresholds," i.e., the tendency of the crossing of one threshold to induce the crossing of other thresholds, often lead to very resilient, although often less desirable, alternative states.
AB - Most accounts of thresholds between alternate regimes involve a single, dominant shift defined by one, often slowly changing variable in an ecosystem. This paper expands the focus to include similar dynamics in social and economic systems, in which multiple variables may act together in ways that produce interacting regime shifts in social-ecological systems. We use four different regions in the world, each of which contains multiple thresholds, to develop a proposed "general model" of threshold interactions in social-ecological systems. The model identifies patch-scale ecological thresholds, farm- or landscape-scale economic thresholds, and regional-scale sociocultural thresholds. "Cascading thresholds," i.e., the tendency of the crossing of one threshold to induce the crossing of other thresholds, often lead to very resilient, although often less desirable, alternative states.
KW - Cascading effects
KW - Regime shifts
KW - Social-ecological systems
KW - System interactions
KW - Thresholds
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=33745894117&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=33745894117&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.5751/ES-01678-110120
DO - 10.5751/ES-01678-110120
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:33745894117
VL - 11
JO - Conservation Ecology
JF - Conservation Ecology
SN - 1708-3087
IS - 1
M1 - 20
ER -